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Notes -
I like a watch as a piece of masculine jewelry, but lost patience with mechanical watches. Wear a white-dial Grand Seiko 9F most days with the OEM straps in brown and black (leaving the bracelet it came with in the box). Picked up JDM Seiko solar-quartz Prospex diver and chronograph models for the weekends. And keep a quartz Hamilton Ventura for when I get dressed up in the evenings — swapped the fake lizard skin strap it came with for a real one. I forget the model, but I also have the larger version of the F-91W that Casio came out with a few years back for skiing, yard work, etc.
Maybe in a decade or so I’ll buy that solar Cartier Tank. But lots of other expenses stand in the way.
Found a Credor tank and a pre-TAG, Heuer diver for the missus on eBay.
How well do the Seiko solar watches work? I've never had one. There were a few that look nice that I'd consider, but I've had bad experiences with their quartz watches fifteen years back and don't want to repeat it.
I have had no issues with the Prospex solar models in terms of functionality. I keep them in a small watch box on my dresser with a glass lid and they’ve never run out of juice. There is a tiny alignment issue with the sweep hand on the chronograph, that I’m sure I’m the only person to notice, but that comes with buying gray-market JDM Seikos off eBay.
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